The majority of small computer networks exist in environments with minimal Information Technology (IT) expertise and no centralized management infrastructure. Consequently, many workers are relegated to working in isolation and are unable to realize the full potential of a networked computing environment achieved through sharing of computing resources.
Several problems may occur in such an environment that inhibit the easy sharing of computing resources. Generally, the problems can be assigned to four different categories. The first category is exposing the resources that are available for sharing within the network so that users can decide how to organize into sharing groups and which resources to share within each group. Monitoring is the other category. Administrative users, such as a teacher, small business owner, parent, or administrative user on a particular system are unable to track what other users are doing and how equipment is behaving without physically walking around to each individual user's computing station. Consequently, efficiency and resource management are difficult to monitor and hence, making strategic decisions is difficult.
Another area that may create issues is control. Administrative users cannot easily control what users are doing with the computing equipment and therefore how resources should be shared amongst users. Again, this makes it difficult to manage the resources and make the most effective use of the resources.
Finally, maintenance is a concern. Users cannot easily keep the equipment running properly and protect data from failures. This is also closely tied to monitoring and control. When the administrator is uncertain how the equipment is being used and whether it is running properly, it is difficult to provide proper maintenance to the equipment.
Existing Shared Resource Computing (SRC) systems allow users, to some extent, to address and solve these issues and concerns for a small subset of the potentially sharable computing resources. However, a general solution that allows the full breadth of computing resources to be shared does not exist.